Short Stories

For ten years, from 1988 to 1998, Arc Publications ran a short-story competition open to writers living in the North of England (or more specifically the areas covered by the then Northern Arts, North West Arts and the Yorkshire and Humberside regional arts boards). With an entry fee of £5 and a limit of 3000 words per story, writers of every complexion — old hands, first-timers, under 20s, over 80s — sent in their stories to be judged each year by two high-profile professional writers, who undertook this labour out of the kindness of their hearts in order to give encouragement to new writers. Although the task of running the competition eventually became too great a burden for the Arc staff, during its short existence the competition elicited some outstanding winning entries — the ten to fifteen stories from each year's entry that the judges considered the best, all of which were published in an annual anthology — and started a number of writers on their professional writing careers, among them Julia Darling, David Almond and David Swann.